Dental pros warned against working with unregistered colleagues

The General Dental Council (GDC) has warned dental teams not to risk their careers by working alongside unregistered colleagues.

The warning comes in the light of the fact that GDC registration for all dental care practitioners must be complete by 30 July.

The GDC website even has a clock ticking down the hours as a reminder and the BDA Conference last week served as a great stage for the GDC to hammer home its message.

Registration based on experience or an old qualification also ends then, too, and from 1 August, dental care professionals will only be able to register on the basis of a current qualification.

The number of DCPs having already put in their registration totalled 38,001 as at 29 April – although difficult to put into a percentage of a whole as the GDC hasn’t access to the number of dental nurses and dental technicians working within the industry.

DCPs will be expected to complete 150 hours of CPD (50 hours verifiable0 over the five-year period.

Core subjects include medical emergencies, cross-infection control and radiography (although not so for dental technicians).

Alison Lockyer, Chair of the GDC’s Registration Committee, tackled the importance of CPDs and was keen for dentists to get involved in the continued training of their practice team, suggesting staff training and team revision of medical emergencies, ‘perhaps during a lunch hour’.

This would count as verifiable CPD.

She told the attendees, many of whom were dental nurses, ‘What CPD you do needs to take into consideration the needs of patients and the relevance to your practice.’

Chief Executive of the GDC, Duncan Rudkin, stressed the importance of individuals taking responsibility for ensuring indemnity was in place, whether it was the practice of the DCP footing the bill for insurance.

‘As a registered dental professional yourself, you have a personal responsibility for protecting patients,’ he said.

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